Exclusive: Victim in Airbnb-related ransacking speaks outs

In today’s Chronicle, this column covered the case of EJ, the anonymous woman who blogged that her San Francisco home was burglarized and vandalized by a guest who arranged to stay there through the service Airbnb.

This afternoon, EJ agreed to a brief interview about her case with the paper. She said she wanted to provide an update on her story and to clarify some of the information that began spreading about the incident online, after the story went viral earlier this week.

Separately, the San Francisco Police Department confirmed this afternoon that they made an arrest related to the case.

“The whole situation has become overwhelming,” she said. “I have a lot of decisions about how I need to move forward here and I need the space to make them. I feel very uncertain right now.”

EJ asked not to be named, because she still feels victimized and vulnerable, but said it was OK to say that she’s a corporate event planner in her late 30s. She said she occasionally works with but definitely not for the hotel industry, refuting some online claims that her story was manufactured to damage the reputation of Airbnb, a challenger to the traditional hospitality sector.

Some online commenters have said she wasn’t a real person at all and at least one on her blog called her a derogatory term.

(I confirmed her identity through a public records search that matched identifying details she offered with those provided by the SFPD, as well as additional information about the case that corresponded with what the department later revealed).

EJ first posted a description of what happened to her apartment in late June:

I returned home from an exhausting week of business travel to an apartment that I no longer recognized. My home had been burglarized, vandalized and thoroughly trashed by a ‘traveler’ I connected with via the online rental agency, airbnb.com.

As I wrote in today’s paper:

The rest unfolds like a horror story. The thieves smashed a hole through a locked closet door to grab jewelry. They used EJ’s coupons and credit card to shop online. They left clothing in a wet, crumpled pile, cut the tags off pillows and appeared to have incinerated a set of sheets.

At the time EJ said that Airbnb had been responsive and supportive. But she said the tone changed several days later, when an executive reached out and asked her to take down the post. This person explained that they were in the middle of a funding round that could have been harmed by the negative publicity, she said in an updated blog post on Thursday and in our interview.

“That made me feel very upset, like I was completely losing their emotional support and assistance,” she told The Chronicle. “There was a tone in it that made me feel very scared. I felt like it was very heavy handed. It felt like pressure and I was in a very emotionally fragile state at that point.”

“It was one week after,” she added, “so I just felt like I was being squeezed on all sides.”

She said she broke down crying in the San Francisco District Attorney’s office later that day.

EJ said her apartment has been completely cleaned and rehabilitated at this point, other than a broken door. She said the subject of compensation from Airbnb is still in flux, declining to provide further details.

She said that while police have detained one person in her case, it’s unclear whether or not this person was directly involved, and whether or not other possible suspects are still at large.

In a corporate statement yesterday, Airbnb said:

Trust and safety are Airbnb’s highest priorities and as such the improved safety processes are being implemented immediately and will roll out of the coming days, weeks and months. Furthermore, these procedures will continually evolve as we strive to make the service we provide as safe as possible. Whilst we are truly shocked and saddened by this incident we are relieved we had the systems in place to be able to assist with the investigation and the authorities now have a suspect in custody. We are now focusing our attentions on how to prevent an issue like this happening again.

In a statement today, the SFPD said that they made an arrest in the case:

On 06/28/11 the SFPD through investigative leads conducted a search of a premise in Belmont, CA. Two people were detained, but released pending further investigation. The search yielded some of the items that were taken in the theft.

Later on that night through investigative leads, SFPD officers made an arrest of Faith Clifton, female, white, 19 years of age of San Francisco. Faith was booked into San Francisco County Jail that night on possession of stolen property, methamphetamine, fraud charges and outstanding warrant out of Milpitas, CA.

SFPD has been in contact with the victim and have been in contact with the website company, who has provided as much information as possible in this matter.